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The cognitive interview
developed a series of
retrieval strategies that
provided greater levels of
detail without contaminating
the original memory or
introducing errant details into
the victim or witnesses story.
that we have has its own separate net of details crossing,
overlapping, and perhaps replacing parts of the previous net,
we can see how this analogy could contribute to a changing
memory of an event. During therapy, many therapist do not
recognize the inherent suggestibility of their clients and may
reinforce delusional ideas or implant entirely new memories.
Betsy Petersen, in her book Dancing with Daddy, describes
the sudden recovery of her repressed memory. She said that
while she was jogging, "A thought came into my mind as if
it had been projected on the screen: I'm afraid my father did
something to me." In an attempt to explore this image further,
she spoke with her therapist. 'I have a story to tell you,' I said
to Kris, my therapist, several days later.'…'I don't know if I
made it up or if it's real.' She listened: 'It feels like a story to
you,' she said, 'because when something like that happens,
everybody acts like it didn't.' 'You mean it might really have
happened?' Now I wasn't sure I really did want to know.
'There was a good chance it'd happened,' she said."
The therapist went on to point out her strained
relationships with family members, sexual difficulties, and
the lack of closeness with her children all indicated abuse.
Peterson went on in her book: "I had no memory of what my
father had done to me, so I tried to reconstruct it.…I put all
my skill as a reporter, novelist, and scholar to work making
that reconstruction as accurate and vivid as possible. I used the
memories I had to get to the memories I didn't have."
When examining the initial recovery of the memory, an
investigator should consider how the therapist or interviewer
developed the final memory. Often the therapist may have
expectations or a predisposition that a client's problems are
caused by sexual abuse. Some therapists may ask the patient
to go home and consider the possibility they had been sexually
abused and to attempt to recover the memory of events. These
memories can then be reinforced by asking suggestive or
leading questions, further developing untrue details.
Memories can also be introduced using what is being
dreamt during the clients sleep cycle. These dreams form
"indicators" of repressed memories, which the therapists'
work to retrieve other repressed memory fragments. These
dreams may be reoccurring, nightmares, or dreams containing
strong feelings, which the therapist believes are indicators
for the repressed memories. The question really must be
considered, were the dreams real or did they and the resulting
fragments come from the therapist's attempt to resolve the
client's anxieties?
A number of years ago psychologist Brooks Brenneis did
a literature review looking at dreams and actual traumatic
events. What he found during the literature review was
that dreams about actual traumatic events did not reflect
the actual traumatic event. Brenneis concluded, "There was
no empirical evidence to substantiate the idea that specific
traumatic experience predictably passes untransformed into
dream content."
The process of altering or introducing a memory deals
with the use of leading questions or even repeated attempts
at retrieval during which certain words help set the tone
of the event. There has been research into memory that
clearly establishes that the first words in a list are best
recalled during later attempts at retrieval. It's the words
in the middle of the list that are most often forgotten;
concrete nouns are better remembered than abstract nouns;
words that can be categorized are better remembered than
those not categorized. But these laboratory attempts do
not generalize well from the laboratory into the everyday
world of victims and witnesses. However, some of the early
work of Dr. Loftus showed how slight differences in how
questions are asked and the words used have implications
on the accuracy of a witness's observations. In addition,
when incorrect or misleading information was presented
to a witness after the event, these also compromised the
witnesses' accuracy.
The Cognitive Interview
One of the most successful advances in real-life
interviewing was the development of the cognitive interview
by R. Edward Geiselman and Ronald Philip Fisher. The
cognitive interview developed a series of retrieval strategies
that provided greater levels of detail without contaminating
the original memory or introducing errant details into the
victim or witnesses story. Some studies of the cognitive
interview have shown retrieval gains of 40 percent with
respect to accurate retrieval. The cognitive interview was
later applied to real-life fieldwork settings using police
officers as the interviewers with continued success. There
have been other successful developments with memory
retrieval in the areas of lineup research and interviewing
child witnesses. The child witness is especially vulnerable to
improper questioning since they are so suggestible and lack
the life experience to understand the implications of their
witness statements.
In the next several columns we will discuss the
complexity of human memory and implications for the
interviewer who is attempting to recreate the events of the
situation as accurately as possible. This will be important for
any interviewer who is looking to identify the truth and
actively wishes to avoid problem areas that can contribute to
inaccurate details or the introduction of false details into an
individual's story.
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NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2018 | LOSSPREVENTIONMEDIA.COM